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 eyes that it was almost fright. "I didn't know she took a shot at anybody. She never said a word to me about it. Are you sure you've got it right?"

"Right? Hell! everybody knows it."

"Some folks that gabs without lief or license is apt to git their foot in it," Mrs. Brassfield said. "I reckon Zora she'd 'a' told Mr. Dunham herself if she'd wanted him to know."

"I ain't a carin' a damn," Shad said, recklessly. "Everybody knows she took a shot at him. I ain't a carin' a cuss what she wants to keep still."

"I didn't know," Bill said helplessly, sweat standing on his forehead at the thought of the danger Zora must have faced for him that day.

"Yes, and Randall he's gone, too. Well, xe lit out as soon as he got over the maulin' Moore give him—and he give him plenty, I'm here to say, men!"

"I never heard of Randall," Dunham said, his confusion growing at this repetition of an old story that was news to him.

"He was a blacksmith, he had a bunch of whiskers growin' on him up to his years. I never did see how in the hell a man with that many whiskers on him kep' 'em out of the fire when he was stirrin' it up around a horseshoe, no, nor kep' the sparks from touchin' 'em off when he hammered a redhot aarn. He was the feller that was draggin' Zora away from you when Moore and that Texas feller come a bustin' up. You heard about them two fellers comin' in the nick of time to save your neck, didn't you, Bill?"